A Swarthmore Admissions Blog

September 25, 2017September 15, 2017

Forty Winks

High school conditioned me to run regularly on no more than six hours of sleep. I’d jump in bed by 10 p.m. and jump right back out at 4:15 a.m. (Don’t ask me why I woke so early — high school was a four-year-long GPA-fuelled haze.) I figured that going to college and having my classes broken up in short blocks would make life infinitely easier. My earliest class would be at 10:30 a.m., my latest ending before three in the afternoon… Visions swam in my mind’s eye of the late-morning sun gently waking me on a Thursday, of falling into my bed after a long day at midnight, of never having to walk into another class dead from sleep deprivation.

None of those things quite happened. My earliest class was 8:30 or 9:30, because despite my best efforts I am naturally an early riser. Sleeping in was restricted to weekends. Some nights I stumbled in at 2 a.m. after one last resounding defeat in League of Legends and/or deciding that my remaining homework can get done tomorrow. Frankly, my downfall was usually bad time management. That’s on me.

So sometimes I’d get hella drowsy in the afternoon. Not the floaty sort where you’re like a comic book character with little bubbles and lines floating and whizzing around your head. No, I mean the aggressive sort where you’ve got a two-ton weight pressing down on your neck, a one-ton on each eyelid, and just staying conscious feels like running a marathon. What’s a student to do? There is, in fact, only one thing to do.

Yes, my friends, it is that most sacred of rites: the Nap. Savior of the sleepy, restorer of rest! Maybe it’s the newfound free time between classes or the more variable sleep schedule, but I’ve found myself napping quite a bit since I got to Swat. And I think it’s because these snatches of sleep before my next class or my campus job are so precious that I’ve developed a new, deeper appreciation for the very notion of sleep. And, perhaps most importantly, I am cultivating the ability to sleep pretty much anywhere that many Swatties seem to share.

McCabe Library. (L: Lijia Liu ’20)

Parrish Parlors. (L: Yin Xiao ’20)

Math-Stat Lounge.

Kohlberg Hall. (Malini Kohli ’20)

Parrish lawn. (Nick Anderson ’20)

Nothing beats your own bed! (Nana-Kwasi Asamoa ’20)

So whether I’m resting between classes, relaxing after lunch, or winding down after a long day, a nap is always welcome. The toughest part is waking up!